#as his fathers son. out of ... what obito identifies as

[everytobito]

[fuckyoucanada]

The Jikan Phenomenon, Ch. 2: The First Encounter

Chapter Summary: Sasuke struggling to deal with his family. The hokage, it is decided, must be notified.

Character Tags: Uchiha Sasuke, Uchiha Itachi, Uchiha Mikoto, Uchiha Fugaku, Uchiha Shisui, Sarutobi Hiruzen, Orochimaru (Naruto), Hatake Kakashi, Uchiha Obito, Shimura Danzou, Yakushi Kabuto

Story Tags: Family Feels,Time Travel,Mangekyou Sharingan, Drabble, Prompt Fic, Post-Fourth Shinobi War, Dimension Travel, Pre-Canon, Time Travel Fix-It, Rinnegan, Family Issues, Mind Manipulation, Pre-Slash, Uchiha Sasuke-centric

The first thing Sasuke needed to think about was who he could trust with the knowledge of his future. He needed to carefully consider what he was sharing with the people around him. Mikoto and Fugaku—they can’t be his parents any longer if he was going through with this—were staring at him in awe, taking in his appearance. They were good people, Sasuke knew, but they were currently in a precarious position. If Sasuke was going to stick around, they would be the ones covering for him. This would definitely throw even more suspicion on the Uchiha Clan’s activities. The Clan was already going to try and plan a coup in a couple of years; Sasuke wasn’t sure he wanted to contribute to the negative feelings the village held towards his Clan.

So, what to tell them?

“You’re so big,” Mikoto whispers, her eyes shining. “Just look at you!”

Sasuke let himself smile at the comment, a bubble of wistfulness growing in his chest. He never got the attention he had so craved from his parents as a kid, and to have their focus completely on him, for them to be staring at him with pride shining on their faces, was certainly a scene in which he never thought he would find himself in.

“What rank did you reach?” Fugaku asks, looking Sasuke up and down.

Sasuke shifts, his cloak lightly swishing back and forth. He wondered if it was suspicious that he wasn’t wearing any village identifying clothing. He didn’t have the uchiwa fan on him anywhere either. Oh well, he dismissed, things to worry about for another time.

“Genin,” he replied with some amusement. Once everything had started to calm down after the war, Sasuke hadn’t seen any point in taking any tests to raise his rank. He hadn’t stayed in the village anyway, so it wasn’t like he had much of a chance to take the chunin and then jonin exams. People were more than aware that he was no genin.

“That’s all?” Fugaku’s proud look has turned into a frown, his relaxed observation of Sasuke turning more sharp as he gazes at Sasuke’s form, still hidden behind his cloak.

“I took the chunin exams at one point, but wasn’t promoted. Never got around to taking it again,” Sasuke responds with a light shrug. They were his family, but until he had a more concrete plan, there was no reason for them to know what Sasuke could do; just how much he was capable of.

Fugaku is still frowning at him, a look of disapproval clear on his face, but Mikoto is still smiling gently at him, just happy to see him.

“We were just sitting down for breakfast! Why don’t we head back to the kitchen and talk while we eat? Itachi, go get your brother out of his room.”

Sasuke paused, his mind suddenly remembering that his older brother was stationed behind him. Sasuke turned and looked over his shoulder, making eye contact with the younger man.

He looked so young. Sasuke etched Itachi’s young, untroubled face into his mind, trying to take in details that he had long since forgotten. Itachi had made many mistakes, had put Sasuke through a type of hell that no one had ever deserved to go through, but he was still Sasuke’s older brother, the man who—while misguided—tried to do everything in his power to keep Sasuke alive. It was nice seeing the curious look on his face; it makes him look alive.

“Yes, kaa-san,” Itachi replied calmly, his voice never wavering as he made eye contact with Sasuke. They stared at each other for a few seconds before Itachi quietly slid open the door and headed out into the hall, turning off towards the direction of the bedrooms.

“Come,” Mikoto said cheerfully, walking to Sasuke and, while advertising her movements clearly, softly put her hand on Sasuke’s left shoulder. Sasuke allowed it, not letting his flinch show. He had gotten used to others avoiding touching him on his left side. With his arm quite clearly not there anymore, people had the tendency to avoid looking at it. The only time someone would go for it would be when they thought they saw a weakness he was carrying. Sasuke allows Mikoto to lead him out of the room and it’s when she moves her hand down slightly, her fingers grazing the empty area below his stub that he had a revelation. They couldn’t see his missing arm, he realized.

Mikoto paused for a second as they walked towards the kitchen, a flash of something going through her eyes, before she continues on her way, her hand once more upon his shoulder. He allows her to push him towards the table, taking a seat as she prepares a setting for him. Fugaku comes in next, his frown still ever-present on his face. From behind him, a small head pops out.

He had thought Itachi looked young. His own face stared back at him, oh so curious with just a tinge of uncertainty and fear. He was tiny at this age, his cheeks full and his face prone to blushes whenever he felt embarrassed. Sasuke hadn’t felt like that in so long that it was rather jarring to see himself flush when met with an unwavering gaze.

“Itachi says you came from the future,” young Sasuke whispers curiously, inching his way towards his older counterpart.

Sasuke makes sure his smile is tranquil, nothing but kind feelings on his face and that they are the only feeling radiating from him. There was no reason to spook his younger self. “He’s right.”

Younger Sasuke perks up, his eyes widening. “I travel through time?!”

Sasuke nods, not saying anything when Itachi appears, taking younger Sasuke’s hand and maneuvering him into sitting next to their mother instead of beside Sasuke. Itachi, with no indication of his tactical move, takes the empty spot next to him.

Itachi doesn’t trust him. That’s certainly new, Sasuke thinks with an internal chuckle. This entire experience is causing havoc with his emotions; especially if he’s started chuckling.

“I did, yes,” Sasuke finally tells his younger self. Sasuke has travelled through time. His younger self might not, not with the changes Sasuke has already made with his presence.

“That’s so cool!” younger Sasuke shouts, his round eyes shining with glee and amazement. His grin is wide and it makes Sasuke’s mouth hurt in sympathy at the stretch.

“Sasuke-bo, eat your natto,” Mikoto interrupts, gesturing towards the younger Sasuke’s untouched food.

“But kaa-chan,” younger Sasuke whines, his attention briefly taken off his time travelling counterpart, “I don’t like natto!”

“Sasuke,” Fugaku interjects gruffly, “Uchiha do not whine. They do as their parents tell them.”

His younger self continues to pout, though he does start taking small bites of the fermented soy beans.

“You too, Jikan-kun,” Mikoto encourages, turning to scold Sasuke. Sasuke blinks, jolted by the sudden address. He supposes it is quite confusing to address both of the Sasuke’s in the room by their shared names. He lets it go, but can’t help making a face at the natto in front of him. Mikoto lets out a breathy chuckle, smiling brightly at him as she says, “You still make the same faces!”

Sasuke glances at the younger Sasuke, sees the indignant look on the child’s face, and quickly clears his own face of emotion. “I haven’t eaten natto in almost ten years.”

Mikoto blinks at the comment, surprised. “Do I stop making it for some reason? It’s your tou-san’s favorite.”

Sasuke calmly replies, “Once I’m older I spend a lot more time eating at the training grounds.” Sasuke, after the massacre, had made his own food and packed it, that way he wouldn’t have to stop training, even when he became hungry.

“Oh, I hope you didn’t overwork yourself!” Mikoto fretted.

“You wouldn’t have let me,” Sasuke confesses. It’s true; if his mother had been alive she would’ve surely made him attend at least one meal with the entire family.

Mikoto’s returning grin is mischievous, a wink sent in his direction letting him know that she assumed she must have done something to get him back into the house and spending time with his family. It makes his chest ache. Seeing his mother, her smile so very beautiful, so concerned for his wellbeing is sending a pain throughout his chest.

The five of them settle down, eating in a relaxed quiet. Younger Sasuke is done first, the little boy waiting patiently at the table as the rest of his family eats. Itachi finishes next and, with a silent glance exchanged between father and son, bundles up his younger brother, announcing his intentions of giving his little brother a bath. Younger Sasuke whines, wanting to ask Sasuke more questions, but Itachi insists that Sasuke bathe before he can leave the house for the day. Both of them are gone the next second and Sasuke can feel the heavy stares of the other two set themselves on him.

“How long has it been gone?” is the first thing Mikoto asks, her voice sad as she looks at him. Fugaku raises his eyebrow slightly, obviously not in the known about what Mikoto is talking about, but curious for his answer nonetheless.

Sasuke debates with himself for a moment. He can’t hide it, Mikoto knows after all, but he’s hesitant to let them know about his disability. He was very much convinced that it let people underestimate him. People would take a look at him and assume that he was weak. H had used it to his advantage once or twice. This, however, was different. This was the family he had lost far too soon all those years ago. Would they take one look at his arm and recoil as the image of their still young son overlay his own? It was too late now to back out anyway.

Sasuke shrugs out of his cloak, allowing his empty left sleeve to be seen by the two diagonal from him. Mikoto lets out a faint gasp, her gaze locked onto the empty sleeve, while Fugaku’s eyes only widen to indicate his surprise.

“I lost it a few years ago,” Sasuke answers, taking his cloak into his hand and setting it down beside him.

“Does it hurt still?” Mikoto enquires softly, her gaze full of pity.

Sasuke doesn’t let the pity bother him. He made the decision himself to not get a replacement arm made out of Hashirama cells. His lack of arm is a reminder of who he is now.

“No. It hasn’t for a while.”

“Who did it?” Fugaku’s voice is hard. Sasuke fights the urge to straighten his back, not wanting to break his relaxed posture.

“Does it matter? They won’t do it again,” Sasuke tells Fugaku, his voice letting the older man know that he wouldn’t be getting a name from Sasuke. This world won’t be one where it would be necessary for Sasuke to fight Naruto. Sasuke won’t let his younger self abandon the village. He won’t allow for there to be a reason to abandon the village.

Fugaku scoffs slightly, his eyes narrowing, but he doesn’t pursue the subject. Instead, he turns to another difficult topic. “We must go to the hokage.”

Sasuke grimaces. He knows that he can’t stay a secret. The Jikan Phenomenon has always been kept from the general public, as well as the other clans, but it’s something that is far too important to be kept from the village’s hokage. Sasuke isn’t sure which hokages have known of the incidents through time, but he’s sure the Sandaime would be one of the village leaders to know about it. If nothing else, he would’ve been informed by either Itachi or Shisui in the event that it somehow effected the rising tensions in the village.

Shisui. Sasuke blinked, startled out of his thoughts. Uchiha Shisui, known as Shunshin no Shisui, played an important part in the upcoming events. Sasuke had learned about Shisui’s role in the attempt to stop the coup. Sasuke also knew about Shisui’s Mangekyo ability, Kotoamatsukami. The man had failed in Sasuke’s past at using said ability to stop the coup, but with Sasuke’s foreknowledge and his help, could Shisui be the answer to his first obstacle at fixing the past to better the future?

“Of course,” he replied eventually, his thoughts struggling to turn from the possibility of Shisui’s part in his future plan. “I’m ready when you are.”

Previous Chapter

[crescentmoonrider]

What am I willing to put up with today (this, apparently)

(that weird nard AU with a very fitting ‘’’’’theme song’’’’’)

Something went wrong.

Obviously, Obito didn’t expect everything to go perfectly right on the first try, that was what test runs were for after all. But somehow, he could feel with all his being that whatever went wrong was important and fuck, Zetsu was right, playing with time-travel was a stupid idea.

(Not that stupid, not the way Obito intended on weaponizing it, but not his brightest idea from the way things were going.)

First, evaluate the damage. Bad news first – Obito was standing in a place (a house !) he didn’t know, with chakra exhaustion (a rare feat, what with the Tree feeding Obito’s cells at all times), in front of a dead body.

No good news.

Great.

(Obito stubbornly refused to acknowledge the vaguely transparent being next to the body, because he had to draw a line somewhere, and that line was at ghosts.)

He saw nothing that could help him identify where Kamui had taken him inside the room, but maybe the corpse held more answers. The silver hair was familiar but it wasn’t Kakashi. For one, Kakashi didn’t have long hair, and for two, travelling in the future wasn’t possible.

(That fact being the reason Obito took so long preparing this little trip, studied all he could on space-time jutsus, and placed a chakra-infused token at the time and place he came from, to ensure he could actually come back.)

Plus, this was obviously a suicide and if Kakashi had wanted to kill himself he’d have done it long ago.

(« Who are you ? » « What are you doing in my house ? » asked the ghost, and Obito didn’t want to hear that voice or see this – thing, so he ignored it with all his might.)

The certainties were : he was in the past (for nothing else than feasibility reasons), in Konoha (judging by the uniform of the dead man bearing the Uzushio spiral), with no chakra (to the point that even keeping his sharingan activated was draining him and that was not good).

The questions were : when, where exactly, and how the fuck could he go back.

« Look, just because I’m dead doesn’t mean you have to ignore me. I know you can see me. »

So much for Obito’s efforts. Well, with luck he’d get something out of it. Like some minor answers and a more major one.

« Who are you ? »

« I am Sakumo Hatake. I’m not answering this until you tell me – wait. Why did I – I didn’t mean to answer this. »

Had the situation been any less dire, Obito would’ve laughed at Sakumo’s confusion. Or at least breathed a bit louder. But as it stood, things were terrible. That man was Kakashi’s father, which meant Obito had come back a lot farther than intended.

This was clearly not five minutes ago.

Wait. When did he die anyway. Obito couldn’t remember what Minato-sensei told him, if he did tell him.

« How old is your son ? »

« He is five. Wait, how do you know I have a son ? And – »

Obito let Sakumo’s talk turn into white noise while he focused on what really mattered. Namely that if he didn’t want to test the branching-rewriting theories on the flow of time personally, he would have to hide as fast as possible.

When was Sakumo’s body found ? Who found it ? Depending on the answer, he could survive being seen in a rewriting situation, imagining he’d always been here in the first place.

Now, if Kakashi found him here – bad, bad, very bad. That was certain disappearance and a change in time he did not wish to make. Rotten world or not, Obito wasn’t about to let his plans be all for nothing just because he hadn’t been assed to listen to Zetsu’s advice. Plus, if he changed the future, there was no guarantee alternate-him would decide to tackle building the perfect world too. And then who would do it ?

A branching situation would be better, but he wasn’t going to risk it. And it would probably bring a whole other set of problems with it too.

Think about it later, hide first.

Obito looked around him and his head spun and this was not good at all, he couldn’t pass out right now. He debated deactivating his sharingan, but decided against it, at least until he found a (relatively) safe hiding place. Not too far away, hopefully.

He wobbled toward a closed door and discovered a bedroom, clean and neat, with books and scrolls everywhere. If it hadn’t been for the tiny vest on the back of a chair, Obito would’ve been unable to say it was Kakashi’s. He was pretty sure children’s rooms weren’t supposed to look like that (his at the time sure as hell didn’t), but then again, when had Kakashi-the-genius ever been normal ?

Hiding in the room of the very person he wished to avoid was a terrible idea Obito wasn’t going to entertain –

Someone was coming. Fuck the world and its twisted sense of irony.

And so Obito entered the room, closed the door, sat in a corner and erased his presence, hoping whoever came in would pay more attention to the dead body in the living-room than to the foreign chakra in the house.

He heard a door open, and a child’s voice rang in the (almost) empty house.

« I’m home dad. »

Sakumo, who had followed Obito for some reason, froze. Then he took his head in his hands and muttered something that sounded a lot like “fuck, shit, fuck”. Surely, he hadn’t forgotten to consider the possibility that his son could maybe find his body ?

(« I’m an idiot. » He had forgotten, and Obito closed his eyes like it could somehow help him ignore the absolute mess that was the ghost next to him. He wished he could ignore the whole situation too, actually.)

Kakashi went on to say he bought eggplants for dinner, and « dad what are you doing on the floor did you drink yourself to slee- ». Something (probably the groceries) dropped on the floor with a thud and the sound of crushed plastic.

Then there was nothing else. No scream, not even a sob, just – nothing.

Wow, no wonder Kakashi was messed up.

(Sakumo regularly passed through the wall to see if there was any change, which there wasn’t, and Obito couldn’t help but think that if he looked like that when phasing through stuff then it was no wonder Deidara had tried to turn him into a bomb a few times. That was gross.)

(« He’s not moving ! He hasn’t moved in hours ! What did I do – » Obito was very tempted to answer with a very dry “traumatized him for life” but he didn’t for a few reasons. The first one being that it would probably make things worse and he wasn’t ready to deal with a crying ghost. The second being that even a shocked Kakashi would probably notice a stranger talking to no one in his house.)

Obito figured if things were going to stay that way for a while, he could rest a bit. He needed his chakra back anyway.

He settled his back against the wall and closed his eyes.